Transitions

I have trouble with transitions. Right now I feel like that’s the biggest obstacle between my current life and my best life. And, like most of my other problems, it would appear to be totally a product of my own brain.

Some of these transitional issues are obvious to anyone who knows me. I can’t fall asleep quickly, nor can I wake up quickly. I need a lot of time to “wind down” and “wind up” in order to sleep at night and to be sociable or productive upon waking. So right now, I am having a lot of issues with my schedule.

I can’t go to sleep early because when I finally arrive home from my new “full time” (30 hour weeks only, thank God) job sometime near or after 9:00 p.m., I am pretty wound up, and I’m always wanting to spend a few precious moments with my husband before we both go to bed.

I can’t “sleep in” either. When you are running a Bed & Breakfast out of your home, someone has to be up to serve those breakfasts. Much as my dear husband Stu tries to “spare me” from the early bird breakfasts now that I am working for pay (as opposed to the B&B which is not only NOT for pay, but is like a spoiled kid with its hand always out for money from the Cassells), that isn’t quite reality here. Our current guest, who is a regular and a favorite and a very nice man, had his breakfast this morning at 6:45. While I was not awake to help serve it per se, our dog Jack does need to be put behind a closed door (our bedroom) in order to keep him away from the paying and eating guests during breakfast service. There’s nothing quite like an excited dog weighing 40 pounds jumping on you in the bed to guarantee that you won’t sleep in.

Another transition that is really stressing me out right now is my weight gain. While we were back in Missouri preparing to move here to Florida, and while I was working full time doing daily housework here at the B&B, I was able to keep my weight under control with no conscious effort. I was sick during December, not once but twice, with this cold/flu thing that EVERYONE seems to have everywhere I go, and was unable to do my usual “aerobic housekeeping”. Between THAT alteration, and not measuring every bite I was eating while sick (OK, I wasn’t even paying attention to what I was eating – I admit it), I managed to gain about 5 lbs. In January I was working 40 hour weeks training for my new job which involves sitting in a chair answering phones, so that 5 lbs. stayed and attracted a few more.

You guessed it already: I don’t lose weight quickly. That’s another of my transition issues. I actually don’t gain it quickly either, but if I am not constantly vigilant with the scale during major life transitions, it does creep up there on me. This is unlike my husband who, being a man, can often lose 5 lbs. just by skipping one meal. Do I envy him? A little, but I know he has a whole different set of physical weight challenges than I, with his 10 years more “maturity” and some aches and pains preventing his full participation in the active sports he so enjoys.

Another transition that may be affecting my weight is the fact that I am no longer on thyroid medication for my underactive metabolism. This is the result of my transitioning from using health care for the “indigent” (a lovely euphemism for “poor”) to the ability to go to a real doctor after May 1 when my employer subsidized health insurance kicks in. In an ideal world, I would much rather be off ALL medications, but when it comes to the difference between health and obesity (or, for that matter, the difference between mental health and deep depression), I will gladly accept pharmaceutical help.

Transition is stressful for me, although I always do adapt successfully – it just takes me a little more time than some people. I definitely need someone to explain this to my extremely young “mentor” at work who thinks that moving my mouse for me and telling me faster ways to say things on the phone is going to make me better at my job. While there is some truth in the fact that I need to learn to transition more quickly from one call to the next – and I am working on that – sometimes there is no substitute for taking just a moment to think about consequences before speaking or acting. If I get fired for doing this, so be it, but I really am trying to walk the fine line between doing the job right and keeping the call durations and between-call clock readings low. That might just be something that a fifty-something has learned to do better than a twenty-something, but this cannot be explained to a twenty-something who will need to learn it through their own life experience.

This entire country, if not the entire modern world, is going through some serious transition stress at the moment. We definitely need to move from the entitled, “gimme” attitude that so many spoiled Americans display (of ALL ages), into a more competitive, tougher, “suck it up” type of attitude. Our schools need to make our youth competitive for those jobs, so that the jobs don’t go to other countries where they are better educated and work more cheaply. I’m trying to do my part to be just a little tougher, try a little harder… but it doesn’t always happen without a cost. Just ask my poor husband who is weathering the storms of my not so consistent moods during this transition.